Hi, does anyone have a recorded version of “The Sunny Banks” online somwhere I could listen to? Peter L. mentioned this tune in another thread and I really like it (based on the sheet music from JC’s Tune Finder), but I want to make sure I’m interpreting it correctly before I get it too ingrained into my head.
Thanks.
-Brett
Top it off is it’s single jig version. I seem to remember a Paddy Glacken recording but this is pretty standard fare so there should be recordings galore.
Ahem… isn’t T i O is a slip jig, Peter? With an optional extra beat at the end of one of the phrases just to throw you off.
Apart from Paddy Glackin’s version (on his first, eponymous solo album for Gael-Linn, which I don’t have any more), the only other recorded version I’ve heard is on Chieftains 6 (Bonaparte’s retreat). Both Glackin and the Chieftains play Top it Off going into Sunny Banks - so it may have been a pet O Riada / Ceoltoiri Cualann (Sp?) thingy, since they all played with that gang.
Great little reel, even if it started life as a fling.
Bretton I have a simple version I recorded for teaching purposes somewhere, I’ll mail it to you. Take with a pinch of salt.
Steve
No idea if this is the tune you all are talking about, but the reel is on A Tribute to Joe Cooley by Frankie Gavin and Paul Brock.
Yeah yeah, I know, I was driving to Ennistymon this morning when the thought came to me it was offcourse a slip jig. I knew you’d spot it and jump at it.
It was actually Tommy Reck who pretty much standard played the two [slip jig/reel] together. But then, he worked with O Riada as well. Usually the slip jig version though is referred to as ‘Tommy Reck’s version of it’.
I have a tape of Willie Clancy playing them too. As I said pretty much standard stuff.
I have a nice live recording of The Sunny Banks into The Rising Sun by DeDannan from the 1977 Irish Folk Festival (A German concert series). Very much Frankie Gavin, if you know what I mean. 
P.S. I also just realize this tune (Sunny Banks) is very similar to “The Dairy Maid” (another nice tune). I just found myself playing one when I ment to be playing the other and it took me a while to figure out what was going on.
-brett
I am not sure these are related although interestingly Kitty Hayes and myself play a set of reels starting with the Dairy Maid going into Sunny Banks before moving elsewhere.
There are tunes closer to it though there is a tune with an almost identical second part [I think it’s the Fantastic Reel but am not sure of it, it’s a name like that anyhow] and The Kilfrush, Murphy’s, Billy Brocker’s and even maybe the Piper on Horseback all seem to move around the same pattern.
The Rising sun mentioned by Bloomfield is Micho Russell’s version of a tune usually associated with Paddy Killoran. Seamus Ennis learned off him when Killoran was wisiting Co Clare during the 50s. Actually i nthe kitchen of above mentioned Kitty Hayes. Ennis named the tune in Killoran’s honour The Master’s Return and it is more or less assumed Killoran composed it. Which he probably didn’t as Bill Ochs recently told me Micho had the almost identical Rising sun from an old local man and said it used to be popular around Clare.
I am not sure these are related although interestingly Kitty Hayes and myself play a set of reels starting with the Dairy Maid going into Sunny Banks before moving elsewhere.
Cool! I was thinking of putting them together myself. I learned The Dairy Maid on accordion at a workshop with Paddy O’Brien.
-brett